Anna La Torre Vila, a faculty member in the Department of Cell Biology and Anatomy, recently was recognized by UC Davis Graduate Studies for excellence in graduate mentoring and advising. Anna was recognized for her service to graduate programs, commitment to advising and mentoring, and positive impact on graduate students and colleagues. 

After nearly two months of editing our NSF GRFP essays, all five of the 2022-23 PREP scholars finally submitted our applications and immediately packed into cars and drove east to Fallen Leaf Lake.

We spent the weekend of October 14th-16th at the highly anticipated Molecular and Cellular Biology T32 Retreat. We'd been told that we would hear science talks from graduate students in the training program, network with other students and faculty, and explore the lake (situated about 1 mile from Lake Tahoe). 

It's Official.

Professor Joanna Chiu now is the director of the PREP site at UC Davis, with Dan Starr assisting as Co-Director.

Dan remarked, "I am delighted to pass the baton for PREP@UCDavis to Joanna. I couldn’t imagine a better person to be the next director. She'll serve future PREP scholars incredibly well."

PREP@UCD hosted scholars, faculty, and staff from our sibling PREP sites at UC Santa Cruz and UC Berkeley in what we hope will become an annual tradition.

Catching up on folks' accomplishments....

Summer 2022 brought a new cohort of scholars to PREP@UC Davis. We're pleased to host Alex Garcia, Angel Ruiz, Arielle Hancko, Johnny Vertiz, and Kiya Jackson this year. They constitute our sixth (!) cohort since launching PREP@UC Davis. 

Forewarned is forearmed.

We invited current UC Davis grad students Arthur Flores (Immunology), Celena Lozano (Neuroscience), and Maribel Anguiano (Neuroscience) to talk with our current cohort of PREP@UCD scholars about their first year as grad students. 

The scholars peppered them with questions in our hour-long discussion.

The 2021-2022 Cohort of PREP@UCD scholars and affiliates are making have made decisions about grad school! They have worked hard and their mentors have provided tremendous support.

We are SO excited and proud of them.

Joanna Chiu was awarded the Academic Senate Distinguished Teaching Award for Graduate and Professional teaching! 

Congratulations!

Karen Zito, Professor of Neurobiology, Physiology, and Behavior, was named a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science for her "contributions to understanding excitatory synapse formation and the dynamics of postsynaptic excitatory proteins."

John Albeck, an associate professor in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, was recently named a 2021-22 UC Davis Chancellor’s Fellow, which includes $25,000 in support of research or other scholarly work.